Jeff Levy, LCSW
Mental Health, Relationships, Trauma, Identity
1/12/2019 0 Comments I Can't Keep Going Like ThisJeff Levy, LCSW (originally posted on Branching Out: The Live Oak Blog, April 2015) One of the premises underlying the work we do is our desire to help. Implicit in the idea of helping is improving concrete life conditions or increasing the experience of happiness or peace in someone’s internal landscape. Helping means feeling better. If that is one of the most basic premises underlying the work we do, how do we respond when someone expresses a desire not to live?
Of course there are variables we consider: the age of the person, their life experiences, their health, and their supports. Often then, our questions become more specific about thoughts of suicide, fantasies about suicide, plans for suicide, access to drugs, weapons or other materials, and the lethality of one’s plans. Sometimes we think about creating a safety plan or contracting for safety. And if suicide feels imminent, we may go so far as to make a 911 emergency call.
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Jeff Levy, LCSW (originally posted on Branching Out: The Live Oak Blog, March 2015, updated January 2019) Almost 15 years ago, before ideas like intersectionality and microaggression were widely understood, and before Donald Trump assumed leadership in the Whitehouse, I was asked to write an article about my experience as a gay man in 2005 versus my experience as a gay man in 1995. The article was published and entitled: Talking Back to Heterosexism: A Decade of Lessons Learned. I shared some of my experiences of prejudice and isolation, and how these experiences shifted over the 10-year period covered in the article.
I didn’t know when I started writing the article that I was writing about microaggressions. When the editor of the magazine sent back my first version with her comments, she wrote a brief paragraph explaining to me that she thought I was really writing about my experience of insidious trauma; the accumulation of microaggressions over time which were having an impact on how I saw myself, my relationships and the world. 1/12/2019 0 Comments Two Heads Are Better Than OneJeff Levy, LCSW (originally posted on Branching Out: The Live Oak Blog, February 2015) Even after almost 40 years of working in mental health, I still get a little nervous when I am calling a provider I don’t know or have never worked with to coordinate services. It’s not that I don’t value sharing information, I just find not everyone has the same philosophy and not everyone welcomes an opportunity to collaborate. Or, there are those who are willing to collaborate, but whose definitions of collaboration are different than mine.
1/12/2019 0 Comments Healing SpiralsJeff Levy, LCSW (originally posted on Branching Out: The Live Oak Blog, January 2015) Endings and beginnings serve a purpose. They punctuate change. They allow us to put a hard stop on a process that has been painful. They invite us to start anew with a fresh perspective. They allow us to celebrate accomplishments. They enable us to set goals for further accomplishments. Still, as I let my thinking wander, I realize that endings and beginnings, despite the externally created structures, are often self-imposed. In fact, it might be equally important to acknowledge that some things shouldn’t or even don’t end. In some instances, in seeking a finite ending, we actually experience even greater distress. |
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February 2019
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